


Riverbank and Door

by ljs



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Book(s), Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 21:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4977160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year or so after Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell vanished into the Tower of Darkness, Arabella has returned with her friends to England, with a new affinity for water. On an October day full of magic, she goes to the river.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Riverbank and Door

After so long abroad, Arabella Strange found a certain odd delight in the October English landscape, even when it was sere and autumn-chill as it was today. The walls of Lady Emma Pole’s new home on the outskirts of London seemed a prison this afternoon, Arabella caged within respectability and loneliness. But she had the key, she told herself. She could open the door at any time.

“Do you wish us to go with you?” Flora Greysteel said, breaking into Arabella’s thoughts.

Arabella smiled over at her friends, cozily tucked up together with books and tea on the sopha. They would abandon their afternoon plans if she asked, she knew. But – “No, thank you. I will do better alone.”

“Will you, my dear?” Emma said. “Will you be…safe?”

The ticking of the clock on the mantel was loud in the silence which followed. All three of them knew that Arabella, try as she might to obey her Jonathan’s last spoken injunction to live happy and free, felt melancholy most days, and melancholy might lead to accident. She was a woman of forceful character, however, and through study and contemplation she was resolved to be ready for her husband’s return whenever the idiotic man finally broke the Raven King’s spell – or, perhaps, when she did.

“I shall be fine, my friends,” she said, and kissed Emma and then Flora on their cheeks, and went out of the room. When she breathed a guilty sigh of relief on the threshold, they gave no sign of hearing her.

The house was nestled in a protected hollow of ground on the edge of the Royal Park of Richmond. As soon as Arabella, swathed in her warmest pelisse, stepped onto the graveled front path, she heard the rush of water: the nearby Thames, replete with rainwater from storms just past.

Her time in Venice had given her an attachment to water in its many moods: languidly lapping, wind-capped, darkly threatening. She took the side-path that led to the great river.

As she walked through late green and bared branches, she thought of how much she missed Shropshire – Ashfair having disappeared under enchantment – and then, inescapably, of how much she missed Jonathan. She hadn’t heard from him in a month. (For a man insistent on her living well without him, she thought, he had been remarkably communicative; she had grown accustomed to a letter fluttering in through an open window every week or so, or flower-petals scattered over her bed when she retired. She had several times replied in epistles she left open beside her dressing-table mirror, usually noting that he had not been so assiduous with his attentions when he had actually _been_ there. After the first such letter she had been awakened in the middle of the night by the echo of his delighted laughter, so familiar, so longed for, but she had been too late to the mirror to see him.)

Above her head, tree branches rubbed together, a creak and a scrape and a peculiar humming sound. She looked up to see a huge raven, black-eyed and sharp-beaked, staring down at her. 

She was no fool, however. Although she couldn’t have said how she knew, she recognized that it was no usual corvid. A king was a king, even outside the borders of his own land.

“I take leave to tell you, sir, that I object most strongly to your keeping my husband from me,” she said to the raven.

It did not reply. It did not shift its gaze. Yet she felt odd sensations in her fingers, as if… as if….

Without finishing the thought, she picked up her skirts and ran. The river was louder now, closer, and she needed the comfort of water.

Clouds covered the sky, making the river a dull grey when she first sighted it. As she approached it, however, the colour of the water changed, deepened into blue, and then changed again into burnished silver over a ribbon of darkness.

Yes. Magic was about.

When she reached the river bank, she looked down. At the edge of the river was a swirl of silver water, almost in the shape of a door –

“Arabella!” came Jonathan’s voice.

The raven alighted beside her. Her hands began to shake, although she couldn’t have said why.

“Arabella!” Jonathan’s voice seemed closer now, and the silver water pulsed as if someone on the other side was hammering on wood. “Might you call for me? I can’t seem to finish my spell.”

“How?” she said, already breathless. Then, to the raven, “I require my husband. Give him to me, if you please.”

The raven shimmered, black become silver-edged, but it made no answer.

“Arabella!” And now she saw familiar long fingers pressing against the other side of the water, as though the door was cracked.

“Could you for once in your life be _clear_ about something, Jonathan? Tell me how to call you back!”

The raven said, in a strong, male, Northern voice, “The question is what _you_ tell _me_. What will you give me for him?”

Arabella thought feverishly. Her memories of her time with the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair were imperfect; she recalled the ache of interminable dancing, the worse ache of an empty mind, but little else. She, Emma, and Flora had been studying what magical texts they could find on the Continent, yet how could she know enough to bargain with the Raven King? Or rather, how stupid did he think she was, to bargain with a faerie ruler at all?

She crossed her arms and glared at the raven. “I will give you nothing but my thanks if you release my husband… and Mr Norrell, I suppose.” She took a deep breath. “Did you account for _me_ when you spoke your prophecies and spells about the two English magicians all those centuries ago? For what I am owed? The time stolen from me by your former servant, and the time stolen since then?”

The raven made no reply. Its head cocked to one side, however, as if it were considering.

“Arabella!” Jonathan shouted, hoarse now, as if in a corridor next to her room, and his hands came out of the water.

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Jonathan,” she said crossly, planted her feet in the muddy weeds, and crouched down. The outline of what might have been a door was clearer now: she traced the frame in the air, thought “open” in all the languages she knew, and then held out her hand.

His (very wet) fingers clasped hers. She could see him now, feel him, feel the magic flowing between them as a magic door slammed wide and free –

She gave one good pull, and out of the water he hurtled, and she was laid flat on the steep bank with her husband pressing her down into the ground.

“Um, Mrs Strange?” called Mr Norrell from the other side of the water. “Might you help me out as well?”

She was much engaged in binding her beloved Jonathan in her arms and getting her breath back, but she managed to say to the raven, “Sir, if one of the two English magicians comes back, so should the other.”

The raven laughed, harsh and merry, and then that strong, male, Northern voice said, “They can never go back to Faerie if I release them.”

Jonathan pushed up on one hand, shoved his dripping curls back with the other, and said, “Fair enough, sir. We have had enough of Faerie for the rest of our lives.”

“But I do need my books, and my house,” sputtered Mr Norrell from the other side of the water.

The raven laughed again, “Back to Yorkshire, then, Norrell, where I can keep my eye on you. You and my Abbey and the books.”

The river churned once, and then from the midst of the Thames the Tower of Darkness burst out, spinning madly. Arabella, peeping over Jonathan’s shoulder, caught one glimpse of Mr Norrell’s white face and askew wig in an open door, but only one. The raven rose up, wings blacker than the tower, and dove into a window which gaped open at the top.

Like mist taken by sudden sun, the Tower was gone. The river quieted back to grey.

“Arabella, my love,” said Jonathan hoarsely, and then he kissed her, sweet enough to (almost) make up for all the time away. She tasted magic and mint and honey on his tongue, and river-water and salt…

Oh. The salt came from her tears.

But soon enough they had to breathe, at which point she realized with some force that she was lying in chilly mud. “Jonathan,” she said, and kissed him lightly. “We should move. The ground isn’t particularly comfortable, and you are a bit heavier than you were.”

“I had almost forgotten how entirely quarrelsome you are,” he said, laughing through his own tears, and then shook his head so that water flew from his wet curls.

The drops of water gleamed silver and then disappeared into autumn clouds. And her Jonathan was safe in Arabella’s arms, and that was what mattered.

“I told you I’d save you, my darling,” she said. “Now _do_ get up.”


End file.
